Art: City on the Plain

Deep, in India's Punjab, near the Himalayan foothills, a burning sun
beat down last week on 30,000 sweating laborers.
Women in bright saris poured concrete into wooden forms; long lines of
men gouged out foundations, spread smoking tar on road surfaces with
hands swathed in jute sacking. Bulldozers grunted and dusty trucks
rumbled up with loads of hand-made brick. The name of the place was
Chandigarh, and there last week the world's most modern city was rising
from a desolate plain.

India's government chose Chandigarh in 1950 as the site for a new Punjab...